Covido's definitions

🦤 🔢

Short for “Dodo Math.” Dated math topics, questions, or heuristics that may still interest some curious or eccentric recreational mathematicians or math educators, who in turn might share their “new knowledge” with a geeky or gray-haired audience keen to learn about the mathematics of yesteryear.

Square rooting and finding logarithms with a slide rule and on an abacus are two 🦤 🔢 lessons popular among symbol-minded senior citizens.

by Covido December 30, 2022

Protest via Poetry

When someone waves or reads a book of poetry at a Trump rally as they are being pissed off by his racist, supremacist, or hateful comments about his political foes or towards those with a different skin color as him.

Johanna opened a copy of Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen: An American Lyric” halfway through the political rally she’s attending with her husband—did her action look like a sign protest via poetry?

by Covido July 28, 2023

Christmask Party

When those without a face mask are swiftly (and sometimes threateningly) escorted out of an event that celebrates the birthday of Christ to protect the well-being of the vaccinated attendees.

At a Christmask party, organized by a pro-Trump alt-right group, the police arrested a dozen-odd “patriots” for improperly or not wearing a mask, and a few others who were caught with a fake vaccine certificate.

by Covido December 3, 2021

Covid-25

When Covid-19 and its variants from different countries are planning a Xmas gathering at some undisclosed location in China to update each other of their successes and setbacks they have so far experienced in their war against vaccines, WHO-approved or not; and how they could strategize or disguise themselves to prolong their earthly stay as long as possible before the next pandemic visits the planet.

At the Covid-25 meeting, all variants agree that in order to outwit and outlive the vaccines, they would need to continually evolve and mutate in order to creatively fool them, if their plan to have the WHO declare the Omega variant as a variant of concern were to be fulfilled.

by Covido December 5, 2021

Paint-by-Numbers Math

The way 99.99% students worldwide are taught math in school, with everyone painting the same way, and the few who refuse to conform are ridiculed or marginalized—being an odd in a sea of evens often comes with a stigmatizing price tag or a negative label.

Those who refuse to see “math as problem-solving” (read as “math as rote-learning”) in a first class economy should be prepared to be sacrificed as a dead chicken to scare the monkeys—the paint-by-numbers math strategy is good enough for most Asian high-GDP countries to be ranked among the top ten in international comparative studies like PISA and TIMSS, and to win a few dozen medals at math contests and competitions.

by Covido July 11, 2022

Cybersix

When millions of numerically challenged netizens apparently or unexplainably want to read more about the properties of the number six than those of other one-digit whole numbers much to the surprise of mathematicians, psychologists, and even theologians.

Why cybersix attracts so much interest even among math-anxious folks? Are they curious to know more about the six days of creation, as described in the Bible? Do they want to read up about the beautiful properties of the perfect number six? Or, could it be something else that isn’t so obvious to most logical or puritan minds?

by Covido July 22, 2022

1 China

When millions from the Chinese diaspora run the risk of being blacklisted and barred from entering China, Hong Kong, and Macau, because they refuse to publicly acknowledge or recognize that there is only one China in the world, and not two China’s—an autocratic China and a democratic Republic of China (or Taiwan).

Pro-Taipei mathematicians and math educators living in Asia, who reject the “1 China” worldview, risk a higher chance of being kidnapped by Chinese “special forces” and sent to reeducation camps in Xinjiang.

by Covido August 4, 2022